The Box
by Reasonable
Summary: It is a hundred years into the future, and Isabel looks like she is is ready to leave...


**Ahh!**

**This is the first fic I've done in awhile; I haven't really gotten much practice in writing anymore. (I've been playing on Club Pogo too much--if you don't know what that is, you're missing out. And if you want to try it, let me know and I'll give you a Guest Pass )**

**Anyway, hope you like this and I hope it isn't too confusing!**

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It sat there on the table.

It wasn't anything of importance; it was only just a box. But as Isabel looked at it and saw much more than the dingy brown cardboard it was made of. Glancing at the clock, she stuffed her clothes into it.

She could remember another time when she had done the same thing; although this was under a much happier circumstance.

The day she moved in with Arkarian, her soul mate, she had used a box like this. Her mother had stood in her bedroom doorway as Isabel put her clothes away and assured her parent that she would indeed be fine.

If only her mother could see her now.

Arkarian would be home in three hours; the Tribunal meetings usually lasted all night, but he had called her earlier saying that he would be home a bit early. Not that it mattered to Isabel, anyway. He wouldn't be home quick enough to see her.

Isabel opened up her desk-drawer and shoved her prized possessions from the desk into that brown box. Rings, necklaces, and earrings cluttered to the bottom. She was taking all her jewelry with her.

Except for one piece.

Sliding her wedding ring off her finger, the once-vivacious blonde started sobbing. She placed it on her pillow, where she knew Arkarian would find it.

It wasn't always like this; Isabel didn't really want to leave. But now she felt she had no choice.

After moving in with Arkarian a hundred and three years ago, she had been so happy. Yet now all she wanted was to be her self again; to be the adventurous, outdoorsy, and vivid girl that she used to be.

She tried giving up her nature for Arkarian, really she did. She tried to be a loving wife to him, how cliche that may be. She woke him up in the mornings, made his breakfast, and had dinner ready when he came home.

Underneath all that perfection, however, Isabel was breaking inside.

She had been too young when she fell in love; too inexperienced in the world. If she had waited even five or ten years, she wouldn't have this lingering longing inside her.

There had been too many things she had missed out on. Isabel never got to go to college. She never felt the anxiety of college exams and first-time job interviews. She never got to work anywhere where she was important. Little of those around her knew that she had wanted to be a nurse.

No, Isabel did her duty as a wife.

Sometimes, when Arkarian was away at "work" and she was home alone, she wondered what it would be like if she had refused the gift of non-aging. Perhaps then life would have been a little more satisfying for her. She could've met a nice fellow at her job, they would have dated for a few months, before professing their love for each other. They could've gotten married and had bunches of little ones. And then she could've grown old with this stranger, and watched their kids do the same.

Now, Isabel, still sobbing, retrieved a pen and a piece of paper.

'How can I explain this to him?', she thought. 'How can I tell him that I can't deal with this life anymore? Wasn't he the one that said one hundred years was too long for any relationship?'

"_Dear Arkarian_," she wrote.

_"I don't know how to put this on paper, but I just need to tell you. I need to get out; I need to breathe like I did when I was young. Don't think that I don't love you, but I just have to go..."_

At this point, Isabel stopped. "But I just have to go..." she mumbled aloud, before wondering what she was going to do after she _actually _left.

She couldn't go home; Mom was long dead, as well as Jimmy. 'Home' now belonged to another family, who had moved in there six years ago.

Ethan had died as well, an old and happy man. His grandchildren would think it strange if she were go to them for a place to stay.

As for Matt and Neriah, well, they would just encourage Isabel everyday to go back to her soul mate.

No, Isabel would just have to start completely new, in a place foreign to her.

She would take a fake name, change her appearance, anything to keep Arkarian from finding her.

The note Isabel had tried to write was now crunched in her first. It was too hard to put anything into words, she would just leave. She tossed it into a trash bin, and picked up the box from the table.

The door to their home (a huge step-up from the mountain chambers Arkarian held a hundred years ago) sat staring at her, and seemed to get farther away as Isabel walked toward it. Once she had gripped the handle, Isabel cast one glance around the room, getting a last glimpse of the place.

Her eye caught a picture of her husband.

She knew that picture well. It had been taken on their wedding day. Arkarian looked handsame yet strange in his tuxedo. It clashed madly with his hair and eyes, but it flattered his new ring and his bright smile. Isabel remembered how he had expressed his feelings for her that night, not just physically. "I never knew what it was like to like with someone you care for," he had said. "Now that I have you, it's like a cloud has cleared, and you are my new sun."

Memories of that single night exploded into Isabel's brain, bringing thoughts of other occasions as well.

Their first child (long dead now) being born and put into Arkarian's arms, a happy smile on his father's face...

Arkarian surprising her with a second honeymoon in Medeival France...

The time she welcomed him home on Valentine's Day with a house full of romantic roses and candles...

The many times she just fell into his embrace...

Arkarian coming home exhausted and laying in her arms for hours until he fell asleep...

'What am I doing?' Isabel thought, suddenly having a change of heart. How could she leave?

After everything they had been through, she couldn't even breathe without Arkarian beside her.

So what if like isn't as interesting as she thought it would be? She had given up any hope of a regular life when she accepted eternal youth.

The century she has lived with a man that no other can match was full of bliss; Isabel would be a fool to run away from that.

Isabel walked back into her room and picked her ring off of her pillow. She smiled a bit serenely as she slid it back on her ring finger. It only took a second to unpack what she placed into the box.

'When Arkarian comes home, I'll ask him about getting a job to keep me busy during the day,' she contemplated. 'It was the fact that I was so bored while Arkarian was working led to this whole dilemma,' Isabel concluded.

The ever-dutiful wife went into the kitchen, to start marinating the chicken for her spouse's dinner.

As for the box?

Now empty, it sat on the floor in the couple's room. In a few minutes, it will be moved into their garage, where it will sit for another century.

Until an adventure-loving, ageless woman once again finds herself captive in the arms of doubt.

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**Please review!**


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